


A broken system

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: TMNT (2007)
Genre: Brotherly Affection, Customer Service & Tech Support, Donatello (TMNT) Needs a Hug, Family Dynamics, Gen, Good Older Sibling Leonardo (TMNT), How Do I Tag, Overworking, Protective Leonardo (TMNT), Sleep Deprivation, Strained Friendships, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-13 08:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18937492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Leo has been gone a long time, and now that he's finally come back, finally reunited with his lop-sided family and all the things he's missed, he's not quite sure that he's all too happy with everything that's changed.Especially his nerdy little brother who never sleeps and is always grumpy and for some reason thinks it's his sole responsibility to keep his family alive, which is complete and utter bullshit if Leo has ever heard it.But maybe... maybe Leo's been gone too long this time.





	A broken system

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, 2007 is a really great movie and I've had this in the works for a while and I've just finally decided to finish it. I hope this is good because this version of Donnie deserves to be treated much, much better. Let me know what you think x

Leo knew, staring at the brightly lit lab with the tired turtle slumped deeply in the desk chair, that he should have come home long ago.

It was almost five in the morning, long after Mikey went to bed and longer still since Raph came home and parked his bike in the garage. Leo didn’t know what had convinced his tired body to rise from the warm comfort of his bed to trot downstairs and into his brother’s lab- workspace in more ways than one now- lit only by the vast magnitude of the many too-bright screens. Donatello sat with his back to Leo, head pillowed heavily on one hand while the other navigated a mouse on one of the screens.

“Yes ma’am,” he managed through a muffled yawn, readjusting his headset, “If you just hit undo it will come back- no no, on the top left-hand arrow- yes that one. No, the one next to it. Ok, calm down, if you just highlight the new text that just popped up- you right click on the mouse and drag it over the words, then press backspace on the keyboard. Yes, ma’am, there is an arrow pointing to the left and if you just hit that a few times- there you go. If you need anything else just let me know. No, ma’am, you’re not wasting my time, thank you for calling Donnie, your friendly IT tech support here to help you 24 hours a day, ma’am. Yes, thank you, goodnight, good luck with your bake sale.”

The call ended with a click and Donnie sighed, leaning his head heavily on his desk. He looked tired, Leo noticed, more tired than usual, and he wondered if being a leader may have the same result on the purple masked ninja as it did for him. A _ping_ sounded from one of the computer screens and Don sighed, nearly ripping off his headset and placing it not too gently on the desk, wheeling the chair over to the far corner, clicking on a document that had opened on the screen. Leo hadn’t been back for long, but he knew that sound signified the beginning and end of his shifts, and that screen usually dictated payment.

Sighing again, Donnie opened other colour-coded tabs, one red, one orange and one blue, and sent after imputing stats and numbers, closed the tabs down. Leo wasn’t as smart as Donnie, but he knew that those stats where part of his paycheck, and he knew that his brother had just delegated 4ths into each turtle’s private funds. Knowing how little Donnie got from this job already, Leo felt a pang of guilt.

Leaning back and closing his eyes, Don tapped randomly on the keyboards stuck to the armrests of his chair, obviously falling asleep only in the way Leo know Donnie could do.

But Leo, his elder brother instincts kicking in, knew he couldn’t let this go any longer. It was 5:30 by the count of one of the clocks on the many screens. Leo had listened to Don help a woman with her computer for 30 minutes, and only when on a regular day Leo would wake them all up for training in an hour, Donnie was only now falling asleep.

Clearing his throat as to not startle his brother, Leo stepped into the room. Donnie jumped anyway, jerking the chair back and spinning around to face the door Leo had come through, bo tightly gripped in his hands, eyes unfocused and frightful and glassy. Raising his hands, Leo continued to walk in. “Just me, Don,” he said quietly, waiting for his brother to slowly lower his weapon and relax, gripping his chair and sliding back into it. “Just wanted to check up on you. Why are you still up?”

Leo knew, of _course_ he knew, but claiming oblivion and pretending not to know was usually the only way to get Donnie to say anything. But Donnie, tired as he was, just yawned. “Working,” he mumbled simply, pulling his mask down to rub at his eye. Leo was almost taken aback at the deep purple bruises under them, almost the same shade as his mask and wrappings, and the red in his eyes, bloodshot constellations that spiralled out from the iris like cracked concrete in the tunnels. The pallor of his skin was a lighter shade than it should be, and deep in his chest, Leo felt a heavyweight of concern. “Somebody’s got to and not all of us can get away with it as Mikey can, or avoid it like Raph.” The _not need to like you_ was left unsaid, and Leo thought it was accidentally applied. “So, you know, I do what I can to pull us through each day and then I do it all over again the next.”

“Yeah,” Leo argued, once again pretending not to care too much. “But when was the last time you got more than four hours of sleep?”

Don blinked as though the question confused him. “Uh…” was all he muttered as he thought, staring guiltily at the chipped tile under their feet. “A while?”

“How long is a while, Donnie?”

“Before you left?”

Resisting the urge to lecture his brother about his health and wellbeing, Leo crossed his arms and stared holes into the top of his brother’s head. “Uh huh. And have you been eating?”

“When I remember on my 10-minute break.” Was the muffled reply.

Leo sighed, dropping his pretence of not caring. “Donnie, this isn’t good.”

Not meeting his eyes, Donnie leaned back on his desk, eyes glued to the floor. “Look, Leo, you were gone and someone had to pick up the slack.” He looked up in a sudden panic. “Not saying you were slack in the first place, just that with Raph and Mikey gone all the time it was all I could do.”

“Right,” Leo said slowly. “Is that why you’re treating yourself like this?”

“Like what?”

“Like… this!” Leo gestured up and down his brother. “Like you don’t care about yourself.”

Donnie blinked his confusion. “I… don’t think I understand?”

“You’re not eating, you’re not sleeping, you’re working long hours and you care too much about the others,” Leo explained sternly. “Just because I was gone didn’t mean you needed to stop keeping on top of your self-care.”

A stern, guarding look appeared on Donnie’s face, a look that was so new, so unnatural to Leo that he was momentarily taken aback as Donatello’s chest puffed out and his arms crossed over his breast like Leo’s and his foot tapping in the same manner. “You’re right. My bad. Taking care of five people is much easier than taking care of one. My apologies for trying to keep this family together while you were gone. If it makes you happy, I’ll call my boss and tell him I’m quitting my job-”

“Whoa, Don.” Leo held up his hands. “That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

“Then what are you saying?”

Leo sighed. “You’re taking really bad care of yourself. You’re putting the rest of us first before your own needs.”

“So it matters now because you’re noticing, is that it?”

Surprised at his brother's outburst, so uncharacteristic and wrong, Leo took a step backwards. “What… what’s that supposed to mean?”

“This is something that’s been going on since we were kids, Leo.” Donnie sounded so tired, so worn out, so exhausted and Leo felt another sharp pang in his chest. “I’ve always been sacrificing my well-being for yours. I put up the security systems. I built them and put them up by myself. I stitch wounds and relocate joints. I fix remotes and game controllers and TVs. I read to Mikey when he was younger. I spar with Raph when he can’t stand you and Mikey.” He paused, bite leaving his voice as his eyes trailed to the floor. “Just because you didn’t come back doesn’t mean I don’t care.”

“Don-”

“I had to be the leader, you know.” There was a waver in Donnie’s voice. “You left and Master Splinter… gave up a little. I had to take charge. I tried to get training back on schedule but… I was never good enough. Mikey didn’t like the way I did it and Raph never came to a session. On patrol, Raph would just… disappear and Mikey would get distracted by something and not come back until I found him back home. I’d be on patrol alone.”

“We have rules about being on patrol alone.” Leo protested quietly.

“Yeah, well, without a leader all the rules went out the window.” Donnie snapped. “They wouldn’t listen to me. I came home one day and Mike told me he got a job and the Nightwatcher started patrolling the streets and then I just… lost them. I tried Leo, I really did, but they just never listened to me so eventually, I gave up and got my own job. I give everyone part of my paycheck so they can buy things with the credit cards. Someone had to do it.”

“But that someone doesn’t have to be you,” Leo insisted, hopelessly. “Not anymore. Not ever again.”

Donnie laughed brokenly and ran a hand down his face before looking up to his brother with surprising frustration in his eyes. “The world didn’t stop once you left us, Leo. And it’s not going start again anew just because you’re back. We needed to change and adapt to our new lifestyle and you weren’t here for that. You weren’t here when Mikey earned his first paycheck. You weren’t here to see Raph's face when he woke up in the afternoon for the first time in years. You missed out on all of it.”

“And what about you?” Leo asked when he could speak again, when he could find the weak words to say and the air to draw into his lungs. “What firsts of yours did I miss?”

Shaking his head, Donnie hunched his shoulders and lifted something small and metallic from his desk, and fiddled with it between his fingers as he spoke. “A lot of things. The first time I went on patrol alone. The first time I had to limp home by myself and arrived at an empty lair. The first time I got into an argument with a customer. My first kill.” His voice went quiet and he looked away when Leo gasped. “You missed a lot. I’m not saying you probably can’t make up for it, but you haven’t been here. You don’t know what it’s like anymore. We have a new way of doing things now. A new system.”

“Yeah, a system where the others forget you exist and you’re forced to do the work of five people on your own,” Leo retorted. “That’s not a system, Don. That’s a punishment, and it’s one I don’t think you deserve.”

“It’s not like you would know what I deserve and what I don’t,” Donnie said quietly, eyes affixed to the small object in his hand. “You haven’t been here. You don’t know what it’s like anymore. Everything has changed now and we’ve had to change with it, so yeah, maybe I do deserve this ‘punishment’ because someone needs to take it.”

Leo felt agitation pulsing through his veins like the blind panic he had felt so long ago when he was with his brothers in battle and they had needed help. Help he couldn’t give them while he was away training in the jungle. “But I’m back now. You don’t need to do this anymore. Mikey quit his job, Raph has finally stopped being the Nightwatcher every night, and I’m back to help you all out with whatever you need, whether that be training or leading you or just being a brother. But you’re the only one who still has your old job, and you don’t need it anymore. I could understand you wanting to keep it if it was something that made you happy but this obviously doesn’t.”

Sighing, Donnie ran a shaking hand down his face and once again, Leo felt a sharp twang of worry for his sickly-looking brother. “Leo, the measly paycheck I get from this job is currently the only thing we have. It puts food on the table, pizza and Mikey's favourite take out and whatever else we need that day. It helps buy Mikey the video games he wants and the equipment that Raph needs and the candles for Master Splinter. It may be a crap job that does more harm than good, but we need it. Now more than ever.”

“Can’t you…” Leo tried weakly. “Do something else?”

“I’m not good at anything else,” Donnie said and there was something new to his voice that Leo couldn’t recognise and absolutely hated. “Unless people want me to do bo-staff wielding tutorials on YouTube, but that would involve showing people what I look like, and I don’t think anyone wants that.”

There was a palpable pause. A moment of pained silence where Leo looked at his younger brother in pure concern, but Donnie was doing everything he could to purvey no emotion on his face. Leo opened his mouth to protest, but Donnie interrupted him with a shake of his head. “It’s late, Leo. I’ve just finished work and I was hoping to get a few hours of sleep in before I have to start again tomorrow. I’ll see you later.”

As he pushed past Leo, he placed the metal object he was fiddling with on the desk, and Leo let him go reluctantly. Reaching for it, Leo noticed that the small object was a figurine of the Nightwatcher and though he had been away for a while, Leo could identify Donnie’s craftsmanship anywhere.

Watching Donnie’s shell recede into the darkness of the lair, Leo wondered what the hell he had done to his family and if he would ever be able to fix it.


End file.
